Yet another bimbo "wellness" blogger found to be a fraud

[Lemmytheseal2]

@Leaffan

I’m sorry. Am I missing something here?

@kaylasdad99

You could be missing the play on words that conflates “compression” in the sense of physically squeezing with “compression” in the sense of reducing the amount of disk space that a digital file uses up, Leaffan.

Yeah, it’s a joke referring to terminology from the world of recording.

[Senegoid]

A good cleansing diet doesn’t have to be complicated or esoteric or expensive or lots of effort to prepare. I just eat 4 oz. of Dial Soap a day (purists will insist on Ivory). Whether grated over salad, or in the layers of lasagne or in an omelet, it keeps one clean inside and out.

[Mighty_Girl]

@get_lives

And yet I pretty much always find skeptics to be of the overweight middle-aged male variety.

Even the women!

::rolleyes::

[monstro]

@get_lives

And yet I pretty much always find skeptics to be of the overweight middle-aged male variety. They happen to be full of excuses about their dietary choices, and words like “correlation” and “science” seem to get used a lot. The mention of their weight is met with lots of emotions, though. They have no skeptical distance on that, generally speaking. shrug

I agree. There are a lot of people who feel like they have to wait till FDA slaps a warning label on something before they can implement some damn common sense. “I’ll just eat 600 grams of sugar every day and disregard the mounting body of evidence showing this is terribly unsafe, just like we did back in the 60s and 70s with tobacco. By the time I’m convinced, it’ll be too late. But at least I’ll die with a Koolaide smile!”

There are also lot of people who refuse to look at any health-related article because they are certain it’s just sensationalized pap. But typically those articles are reporting an actual scientific study, not just something some nutjob made up. (And I love how every comments section nowadays is teeming with commenters who got a “C” in high school statistics and think they know enough about experimental design to critique an entire study based on a brief summary)

Then there are the type of people who think “Everything in moderation” is the answer for everything, so there’s no need to actually figure out what’s good or bad for us. Stupid people, we can’t handle everything in moderation. There are plenty of things that will kill us if we eat just a little bit (cyanide, for instance). What’s moderate for one person can be dangerous for another. And what looks moderate today can be manifest as “severe” down the road. If “everything in moderation” was easy advice to follow, there wouldn’t be so many fat people in the world.

People aren’t even consistent on what they are skeptical about. They’ll believe the climate change is 100% real and man-made like good little science-lovers, but they’ll roll their eyes when health-related environmental concerns (like pesticides and phthalates) are mentioned in a conversation. I think some people wait for a critical mass of cool kids (including the nerdy cool kids like Neil De Grasse Tyson) to jump on the bandwagon before they decide to hop on too. But don’t expect them to admit this out loud.

[get_lives]

@Mighty_Girl

Even the women!

::rolleyes::

I don’t know any female nutrition skeptics. They’re an extremely rare breed.

On another note, though, skeptics, in general, are rarely the best researchers. The more time and energy you spend defending the status quo (whether that’s in science or culture), the less you have left for possibly changing it. That’s what the best researchers do, change the status quo by proving its flaws. shrug

[Mighty_Girl]

@monstro

I agree. There are a lot of people who feel like they have to wait till FDA slaps a warning label on something before they can implement some damn common sense. “I’ll just eat 600 grams of sugar every day and disregard the mounting body of evidence showing this is terribly unsafe, just like we did back in the 60s and 70s with tobacco. By the time I’m convinced, it’ll be too late. But at least I’ll die with a Koolaide smile!”

The word you were looking for is not skeptic, it’s idiot.

The opposite of not believing in the woo peddled by the charlatans is not stuffing ourselves silly with sugar, or becoming obese.

Some people will get type 2 diabetes, even tiny, underweight Asian ladies (like somebody I know). All the carrot in the world will not stop it. Some people will get cancer, even perfectly fit brown ladies (such as my mom). She grew up in a farm, back then organic was the norm, they grew nearly everything they ate, and she still died from a very rare form of cancer. This is not something you’ll hear any of these woo peddlers admit.

Do you think we are criticising them for telling people to eat more vegetables and less sugar?

[monstro]

@Mighty_Girl

The word you were looking for is not skeptic, it’s idiot.

The opposite of not believing in the woo peddled by the charlatans is not stuffing ourselves silly with sugar, or becoming obese.

Some people will get type 2 diabetes, even tiny, underweight Asian ladies (like somebody I know). All the carrot in the world will not stop it. Some people will get cancer, even perfectly fit brown ladies (such as my mom). She grew up in a farm, back then organic was the norm, they grew nearly everything they ate, and she still died from a very rare form of cancer. This is not something you’ll hear any of these woo peddlers admit.

Do you think we are criticising them for telling people to eat more vegetables and less sugar?

I have no problem bashing the people in the OP or anyone who peddles woo. But there IS a contingent of internet dwellers who swing in the complete opposite direction…who think every health claim, no matter who it comes from, is junk if it doesn’t jibe with their opinion. They are just as annoying IMO.

I didn’t mean to imply that you were one of these people.

[WolfpackJeep]

“If you can’t pronounce it, you shouldn’t eat it!”

>.<

Except for high fructose corn syrup, which you should avoid because it’s not “natural”. Yeah.

[Cicero]

@Mighty_Girl

Then there’s the tragic case of The Wellness Warrior, who passed away a couple of months ago after “thriving with cancer” for 7 years. And by “thriving” she meant following the discredited Gerson Therapy (which includes coffee enemas, I kid you not). Even when it was obvious that she hadn’t been cured, or even gotten better with all this nonsense, she refused to come clean (no pun intended).

Well, she actually died this month. But I agree- how many people has she deluded into believing in such methods.

However, you only have to look at people like Steve McQueen and Farrah Fawcett to realise that many folks get caught up in it.

[asterion]

@Lemmytheseal2

Yeah, it’s a joke referring to terminology from the world of recording.

Specifically, lossy compression (like an MP3) loses information as part of the encoding process. Generally, it strips out data that represents frequencies that generally can’t be heard by most people (so, say, anything about 20 kHz). Lossless compression (and there are several, not very-well known codecs) preserves all information at a cost of larger file size.

Anyway, back to the idiots. I can’t stand the Food Babe and I don’t think I’ve run into a single chemist who looks at her ravings and does anything but laugh resignedly. Here’s Chemjobber’s post on an article about her in The Atlantic. Oh, and then there’s the straight hypocrisy on her end.

[aruvqan]

My assorted [and occasionally sordid] friends tell me I should start food blogging as The Queen of Gluten - I am so anti fad diet it is not funny, and it drives me nuts that there are so damned many bloggers who jump on the nearest next food fad [why oh why won’t kale just shrivel up and die?!] I am so tied of reading raw adaptations, gluten free adaptations, paleo adaptations … I would love to do nothing but classical French cooking for about 6 months. sob

[Gyrate]

@SeaDragonTattoo

I’m 100% behind the OP. When I’ve been asked about or attempts made to bring me into conversations about “detoxing,” my go-to response is along the lines of, “I’m not on any liver transplant list. My liver works fine,” and walk away.

I usually tell them my own detox regime:

1. Drink some water occasionally
2. Try to get enough sleep
3. Don’t eat lots of junk food or drink lots of alcohol.

Unfortunately that makes for a very short diet book and the only merchandising I could do is bottled water and comfy pillows.

[Broomstick]

@Leaffan

I read about the Food Babe a few weeks back. She’s a complete nutbar. Her education is not in nutrition or health or anything related, and I’m too lazy to look up her actual credentials.

There were other gems in the airplane post.

When your body is in the air, at a seriously high altitude, your body under goes some serious pressure. Just think about it – Airplanes thrive in places we don’t. You are traveling in a pressurized cabin, and when your body is pressurized, it gets really compressed!

Compression leads to all sorts of issues. First off your body’s digestive organs start to shrink, taxing your ability to digest large quantities of food. Secondly, this compression reduces the ability for your body to normally circulate blood through your blood vessels.

:smack:

Airplanes are NOT hyperbaric chambers. In an airliner you are under LESS pressure than at sea level.

The ignorance, it burns.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

Its amusing that the Food Babe’s airplane article was so laughably bad that she removed it and set things so the archives wouldn’t keep it.

Here recent book also says there is no amount of chemical that is safe. Good luck with that.

[SciFiSam]

Gah. I cannot stand these people. I got sent links to people like her when I posted that one time on Facebook to explain that the reason I kept not being available for things was because I had rheumatoid arthritis and it was kicking my arse. All I needed was the right diet! I’m not exactly a junk food addict anyway.

@get_lives

I don’t know any female nutrition skeptics. They’re an extremely rare breed.

On another note, though, skeptics, in general, are rarely the best researchers. The more time and energy you spend defending the status quo (whether that’s in science or culture), the less you have left for possibly changing it. That’s what the best researchers do, change the status quo by proving its flaws. shrug

I’m one and know several but I agree that it’s less common among women. I don’t think this is a good thing.

Sceptism does not equal defending the status quo, though. Why do you think that?

@monstro

I have no problem bashing the people in the OP or anyone who peddles woo. But there IS a contingent of internet dwellers who swing in the complete opposite direction…who think every health claim, no matter who it comes from, is junk if it doesn’t jibe with their opinion. They are just as annoying IMO.

I didn’t mean to imply that you were one of these people.

Nah. There are some people who want evidence that can be backed up by measurable experiments, and some who want evidence that seems right even if it’s not backed up measurable experiments. “Opinion” comes into it a lot more with the latter group.

I mean, one of the people in the OP died due to her beliefs and it wasn’t like she was protesting against fascism or something.

[Ethilrist]

I think this is one of those areas where it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, but they don’t seem to be journalists any more–they’re stenographers. Somebody has a press release, they record it and play it back for everybody, and call it reporting.

[BrainGlutton]

@Senegoid

A good cleansing diet doesn’t have to be complicated or esoteric or expensive or lots of effort to prepare. I just eat 4 oz. of Dial Soap a day (purists will insist on Ivory). Whether grated over salad, or in the layers of lasagne or in an omelet, it keeps one clean inside and out.

Eat soap?! Ha! That’s for pussywimps! Real cleansers mainline Drano!

[running_coach]

@BrainGlutton

Eat soap?! Ha! That’s for pussywimps! Real cleansers mainline Drano!

Lyer.

[wonky]

@aruvqan

I am so tied of reading raw adaptations, gluten free adaptations, paleo adaptations … I would love to do nothing but classical French cooking for about 6 months. sob

Then do it. I know for a fact that gluten free recipes don’t outnumber non- because I have to eat gluten free.

Nothing, and I mean nothing in the world, is preventing you from eating all the gluten you want.

[Ethilrist]

@Gyrate

I usually tell them my own detox regime:

1. Drink some water occasionally
2. Try to get enough sleep
3. Don’t eat lots of junk food or drink lots of alcohol.

Unfortunately that makes for a very short diet book and the only merchandising I could do is bottled water and comfy pillows.

Sounds like my diet regime:

1. Buy your own ingredients
2. Make your own food
3. Save the sugar for dessert.

Want pasta? Great! What kind of pasta maker do you use, manual or electric?
Want bread? Sure! When’s your baking day?
Want ice cream? … etc.